A tiny insect nibbles on some leaves. The insect skims over a lake. A little fish swimming below spots the insect on top of the water. The fish zooms up and eats the insect.

Later, a slightly larger fish eats the little fish. Then, the slightly larger fish gets eaten by a really big fish. You are in a boat on the lake fishing. You catch the big fish, cook it, and eat it for dinner.

This is a food chain in action.

WHAT IS A FOOD CHAIN?

A food chain is the way energy goes from one living thing to another through food. Plants are the first step in most food chains.

Plants use the energy in sunlight to make their own food. Plants store the energy in their leaves and stems. Plants are called primary producers in food chains.

Animals eat the plants that use the Sun’s energy to grow. Animals are called consumers. Animals that eat plants are primary consumers. Animals that eat other animals are secondary consumers. Animals store the energy in their bodies.

Energy flows from plants to bigger and bigger animals through the steps of eating and being eaten. Each part of the food chain is directly connected to the other, just like the links in a chain.A food chain is a linear sequence of organisms through which nutrients and energy pass as one organism eats another. In a food chain, each organism occupies a different trophic level, defined by how many energy transfers separate it from the basic input of the chain. A food chain is a linear network of links in a food web starting from producer organisms (such as grass or trees which use radiation from the Sun to make their food) and ending at apex predator species (like grizzly bears or killer whales), detritivores (like earthworms or woodlice), or decomposer species (such as fungi or bacteria). A food chain also shows how the organisms are related with each other by the food they eat. Each level of a food chain represents a different trophic level. A food chain differs from a food web, because the complex network of different animals’ feeding relations are aggregated and the chain only follows a direct, linear pathway of one animal at a time. Natural interconnections between food chains make it a food web. A common metric used to quantify food web trophic structure is food chain length. In its simplest form, the length of a chain is the number of links between a trophic consumer and the base of the web and the mean chain length of an entire web is the arithmetic average of the lengths of all chains in a food web.

WHAT IS A FOOD WEB?

A food web is made of many food chains in a community of plants and animals. There are many tiny animals near the beginning of a food web. There are fewer but larger animals higher up in a food web. There are many more insects than fish in a food web. There are also more small fish than big fish. Human beings are at the very top of the food web. No animals are higher up to make us their steady diet.

Decomposers play important roles in some food webs. Bacteria and fungi are decomposers. Decomposers eat dead plants and animals and cause them to rot and decay. They also eat animal wastes. They break things down into chemical parts called nutrients. The nutrients go back into the soil. Plants take up water and nutrients to make food. Nutrients move through food webs over and over again.

HOW THE SUN’S ENERGY GETS INTO FOOD

The Sun provides the energy that starts the whole process. A plant uses sunlight to make its own food. The energy is stored in the plant. An insect eats the plant. The insect stores the energy in its body. Then the energy is transferred to a fish that eats the insect. When you eat the fish, your body gets the energy stored in that fish.

When you eat salad, fruits, and potatoes, you take in the energy stored in these plants. When you eat fish, beef, or chicken, you take in the energy stored in these animals. When you eat your dinner, your body is getting energy that first came from the Sun. You use this energy to do your schoolwork. You use this energy to run and play.